My Old Kentucky Home

Christopher Columbus
Killed all the Indians
Before they could pass on
The mountains,
My starving ancestors
Left to a widow of a land
That was no one’s.
Around obvious campfires the chief
Would have explained the dance
The dance with the mountain
His love and mother.
“Men climb mountains
because they feel they are
mountains but their skin
is made of sand and
buzzards will pick out their eyes.
The mountain is a woman
with embracing arms.”
But Papaw couldn’t hear him
And Mamaw could only smoke tobacco
And make apple pies.
John Smith wiped the blood
From his bayonet, the blood
Of the chiefs.
My people married the empty Appalachia
And forewent the first dance
Though they’ve made it work,
Mortgages in place of alimonies
And alcoholic funeral processions.
They borrowed coal
In exchange for their dead
Buried children.
Mamaw’s emphysema is that of the land’s
The warn down and mist exhaling mountains
That wait on the far side of the floor
Staring across waiting for a dance.
River’s will be dammed
And the land of my people
Swallowed by a reservoir
Of all their back porch smiles.
In the blue evening smoke
When the cicadas fall silent
A banjo still rings out
Calling stray dogs home
And the people who made my blood
Roll cigarettes in the fading light.
In this twilight
The chief dances
His shadow stretches longer than the earth
And he moves quick to the beat of a whisper
“There is light in the heir
of this land like the reflection
of a slow river where the mountain lion
takes a steady drink.
Remember every stone turned
on its side creates
another mystery.”
The chief was with the land
When wood met iron
And he would have told
The Spanish Conquistadors
“He will prosper
who lets the dragonfly
close to his stream.”
I stand in what can only be
The ghost of a perfect stillness
That lies in the unmarked graves
Alongside Mamaw and Papaw
Who made it up top
On account of good behavior,
A fair hand with the belt,
And no fear of the pain after death.
“This is gonna to hurt me
more than it’ll hurt you”
Said yellow Mamaw
Before the earth
Gave her the only hug that could hold her.
The holler my grandfather
Walked down as a boy
Is where I sit now
Staring into the green forests
That hide the mountains
And the chief would have told me
That they were the piled
Bones of our ancestors.
I am crying as I extend my hand
To the bluegrass mountains.
My mother is crying.
The mountain is crying.
My grandfather’s blue eyes fill with tears.